Re: [Question]DivX, Xvid - Which is better?

Now I don't know about DivX6, but I prefer XVid over DivX5. DivX really lacked developement on the encoding side of things in its version 5 and couldn't be so well configured as XVid - which had become very stable after the 1.0 version had been reached. Not to mention that DivX PRO is not free or open-source.

So far I've been using XVid 1.0.3 and will give the now-in-beta 1.1 version a try when it reaches a more mature state. If looking into the future, the x264 codec looks very promising, but is still under heavy developement.

Re: [Question]DivX, Xvid - Which is better?

Grumble Grumble Grumble

As far as compatibility goes, I've seen several DVD decks on the market with DivX 3/4/5 compatibility while Xvid has yet to establish a hardware market. If you want to produce something that can be shown on a high-end Home Theater system, DivX is the only way to go.

Re: [Question]DivX, Xvid - Which is better?

LenMiyata, it's true that this is pretty late (since I haven't gotten a chance to look at the boards lately) and that officially what you say is the case (hence no XviD logos on players), but the DivX and Xvid codecs are both MPEG-4 codecs and both comply the standards (XviD even complies more to the standards of MPEG-4 than DivX, if looking at the tinyest of things).

In fact, XviD has several configuration profiles that should be (haven't been able to test on a HD media player yet, but the official sites and readmes state it) 100% compatible with the DivX profiles that are usually visible on the stand-alone players' "what can this thing play"- list. It should be possible, since they both create a MPEG-4 compilant stream and the players just have limits about bitrates and resolutions (and encoding tricks) they can and can't handle (there's where the "Why won't this play?" issues come along, if the encoder [person] doesn't know how to encode the video to be compilant with a specific player).

Just like there's a lot of codecs for making MPEG-2 streams, there's a lot for MPEG-4 streams as well. How much the players keep up with the pace of the standards is an another thing. In any case, XviD and DivX are very close (if not the same) in compatibility if set up right.